Jon Kennedy,
Nanty Glo Home Page webmaster and owner, is a former teen and campus minister.
He began his journalism career as teen columnist for the Nanty Glo Journal
and its sister weekly newspapers from 1957 to '62 and became the Journal's
third editor in 1962 at age 20. He has edited other newspapers and magazines,
and more recently, webzines, ever since. His articles have appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Christianity
Today, and many other publications. His Jonals appear here on Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays.Complete
index of Jon Kennedy's Jonal articles

What makes something 'Christian'?

Jonal
entry 921 | Monday, September 26, 2005

In Friday's Jonal
I objected to someone calling the Nanty Glo Home Page a "Christian website."
Earlier, on the eforum list, I objected to a listmember calling Nazi Dictator
Adolph Hitler a Christian. If you think I'm sensitive about things that strike
me as misuse of the word "Christian," you're right. Having spent most
of my adult life as a minister and later a lay teacher defining and defending
the reality behind that word, it has accrued some importance to me.

But
what moved me to take up this topic in a more general way today was a headline
that popped up over the weekend. It referred to a claim that Bishop T.D. Jakes,
the black pastor of a megachurch in Dallas named The Potter's House, made in an
interview: "I don't think we are a Christian nation, and I don't think we were
meant to be," as reported by USA
Today columnist DeWayne Wickham. I've considered this proposition in the
past and despite the U.S. Supreme Court saying in a ruling a century or so ago
that the United States is a Christian nation, I can relate to the "Bishop's"
position, though probably not quite for his reasons. And I also relate to what
the Supreme Court justice who penned the line that we "are" a Christian
nation meant. The learned justice was no doubt thinking sociologically...our Founding
Fathers definitely preferred Christianity in its consideration of moral guidelines
for the nation; they adopted the Ten Commandments as the foundation of American
law, and sociologically, America was then and remains today a "Christian"
nation in the sense that the vast majority of our citizens align themselves with
Christianity at least nominally when questions of ultimate things or guiding principles
come up.

But if by "a Christian nation" we mean that
makes us God's favorite or chosen nation, or that Christians get rights and privileges
here that non-Christians are not given, or that despite our not having a state
church, America does have a state religion in Christianity, I think this is not
and should not be true. But this gets to the question of the day: What makes something
'Christian'? More specifically, what makes a state or national government or system
of government "Christian"? I think it's a dangerous proposition, even
to Christians, because of how difficult it is for us even as individual people
who have committed to following Jesus Christ know it to bealmost impossibleto
be "Christian," and to claim that we have arrived and actually "are"
Christians belies a pride that could be our undoing. Externally, in our church
affiliation and faithful support, we are "Christians," and if we have
to identify a chaplain in the military, college, or in prison, we put down "Christian,"
but if we are actually taught in the doctrines of the faith, we know we have to
say that with a grain of salt or with our fingers crossed (not that we know we're
lying, as that expression sometimes is taken to mean, but that we "hope so,"
we "pray God so").

As I read world history, I think
England, Russia, and the Netherlands have made the best showing of trying
to be Christian nations, and despite their best efforts, despite their spotty
successes, they have so often failed miserably that I'm ready to conclude that
it's better not to make that the goal. Instead, I think it makes more sense to
make being a "Christian-friendly" nation, but also friendly to other
and even competing worldviews and foundations for living, as the goal, and letting
the chips fall where they may. I do insist that Christians should have as much
right to make their input into the community/national ethos as anyone else, and
if they are a majority imposing their morality (not their religion, but the implications
of their religion) on the minorities, that's what democracy is all about. Let
the minorities do a better job of evangelizing and soon they will be the majority.
If the Christian majority decides that gambling is a blight on communities and
chooses to outlaw it, that's a proper social policy, I think. It will keep many
individuals, families, and companies, from ruin, from bankruptcy, and from being
a drain on the community/national economy. If some Christians say they are against
gambling because it's a sin (using a politically incorrect term), others have
the right to object that "sin" has no place in our national ethos...but
that doesn't trump the Christian majority's right to vote to curtail gambling.
Or to uphold the right of unborn babies to be born. Or any other moral stance
that liberals want to "politicize" in order to disenfranchise Christians.

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